Trash Collector Recycles the Old West in Spoofy Commercials

In our most recent episode, the melodrama builds as a Western gal desperately clutches the side of a cliff while a rugged cowboy struggles to save her.

He grabs a branch. The branch breaks. The couple hurtle down toward certain disaster.

Then, from out of nowhere, a mule-driven garbage wagon arrives to dump a load of wood chips below the cliff.

Saved by the soft landing, the grateful gal delivers a quick lecture on the uses of wood waste. A bystander asks in wonder, “Who was that cowboy in black?” Comes the reply, “Why, that’s Wild Phil.”

Fadeout as Wild Phil, atop a rearing horse, shouts: “Recycle Awaaaaay!”

*

It may not be great art. But as TV commercials go, it’s been a humorous way for Phil Arklin (aka Wild Phil), the show’s 6-foot-5 star, to advertise his Palmdale-based trash collection business to Antelope Valley viewers on the Jones Intercable system, all 200,000 of them.

Just as Clint Eastwood gained fame with his spaghetti Westerns, Arklin and his “The Adventures of Wild Phil” commercials have brought the garbage Western to the Antelope Valley, with Phil galloping about aiding gals, catching desert dumpers and extolling the virtues of recycling.

So why would Arklin, a 54-year-old man with a multimillion-dollar business in the Antelope and Santa Clarita valleys, run around duded up in a black cowboy outfit, the Cal Worthington of garbage?

Answer No. 1: Phil dresses that way all the time.

Answer No. 2: Phil may be wild, but he’s not crazy.

*

Wild Phil and his sidekick Eli encounter a woman who’s just broken a fingernail putting out the garbage. “What’s wrong?” Wild Phil asks. “Isn’t there some way neatly to put trash out for pickup?” the woman complains.

Wild Phil unveils his company’s new 90-gallon roll-away cans with locking lids “to help keep the varmints out.”

“Oh Wild Phil, I don’t know how to thank you,” she gushes.

*

It’s not pretty. Grimy garbage trucks, stinky landfills, trash cans left rolling about the street. Not much in the way of commercial material, unless you’re Phil.

In a local TV advertising market dominated by forgettable talking heads or restaurant ads showing close-ups of food, Arklin has created perhaps the most popular and recognizable commercials in the region.

“I just wanted to be so different than anyone else. And I watched a lot of black-and-white cowboy movies when I was a kid,” Arklin says. These days, strangers walk up to greet Wild Phil. “I didn’t think I’d get anywhere near that kind of response.”

His Arklin Brothers Enterprises collects trash from homes and businesses for a monthly fee. In Palmdale, he has the city’s exclusive residential franchise, and had a major part of the Lancaster market until 1991.

Not only are the ads fun for Arklin, who helps craft the stories, but they give him a chance to vent his frustrations. Topping the list was Lancaster’s move limiting his service territory to a small area south of Avenue L.

*

As the scene opens, a shaken Wild Phil, after being dragged out of town tied behind a horse, is riding to save his sidekick Eli from an evil double. All the while, Wild Phil’s balladeer guitarist wails:

“Turn him loose from the memory that’s driving him lonely, crazy and blue.

“It helps him forget about, when Lancaster threw him out . . . “

Down the trail, Wild Phil is about to catch Eli’s evil double when he comes to an Avenue L street sign planted in the desert.

“Stop Wild Phil. He went across the border,” warns Eli. Wild Phil, paying no heed, lassos the sign, pulls it down and ropes the bad guy.

Just about then, three riders approach and one starts to say, “Wild Phil, you’re in violation. . . .” But dozens of townspeople arrive to support Wild Phil and the riders turn tail.

*

Arklin has done at least nine Western-style A. V. Rubbish commercials dating back to the late 1980s, with production values and scripts consistently improving from their primitive beginnings.

Most scenes are filmed at Arklin’s own 53-acre Antelope Valley Public Dump in Palmdale. The cast of regulars includes Arklin’s daughter Amanda and his ex-foreman, Eli Gallegos.

And like that pesky battery rabbit, Wild Phil is popping up in other commercials, appearing in an ad for a friend’s auto shop, in other ads for a friend’s transmission repair shop, and in local Nickelodeon-sponsored ads urging students to recycle.

*

As the scene opens, teacher Miss Amanda is lecturing Wild Phil, Eli and other students on the economics of recycling. Miss Amanda asks the class if they know what a bag of aluminum cans equals. “Yes, Miss Amanda. It equals this,” says Wild Phil, shuffling a big pile of money on his desk.

Phil’s adventures may be corny by the standards of, say, ‘Unforgiven,” but underneath that 10-gallon black hat is a business head that knows that you can’t make it big in the trash trade without name recognition and public goodwill. And in the Antelope Valley, partner, where the desert horizon is still a day’s ride away and the barren vistas of the Old West lie right outside the living room window, how can you beat the undying American archetype for an image to shine through the trash?

Distant horseman gallops into the sunset. Fadeout.